News & Articles

The house passed HR 4970 to make Violence Against Women’s Act (VAWA) petitions for immigrant abused individual more harder to get the immigration. Under the old VAWA law, if a relative abused an individual, then the abused individual could get immigration through that petitioner. Now they have to have a much higher burden of proof including 2 interviews, 2 adjudicators, etc. Note that ordinarily, if that individual was not abused, immigration options were open to her. For instance, if the US Citizen husband of an immigrant women did not abuse that women, loved her and filed a petition for her, then she would get the immigration. However if he abused her, she would have to have 2 interviews, 2 adjudicators, etc to get the same immigration benefit.

Yes, there are some instances where women have used the law falsely to get the benefit. But those are rare. Even in normal marriages there are cases of people getting benefits without actually marrying.

What makes this all the more sad is that abuse is more common in immigrant communities than the general American Communities. Many a times Immigrant men have grown up in a culture of subjugating women. The women are more timid and don’t complain unless it becomes unbearable. I have seen women locked inside houses, with no food, made to do horrible sex acts and yes, beaten. Very often, if they have to go back to their home country, the taboo of a divorce follows them. They cannot marry again because no one will touch a divorced women. With little or no education, they cannot work. They remain as a burden to their parents and brothers.

In the June Visa Bulletin, the Eb-2 category for India and China are unavailable. The Department of State (DOS) thinks that it will remain unavailable for the rest of the fiscal year., ie until September 30, 2012. This means that if someone born in India or China and has an Eb-2 petition with a priority date of say 2001, they still cannot file for I-485 Adjustment of status. They hope to restore the numbers to 2010, but this wont happen until at least the spring of 2013.

The reason that the DOS gives for this unavailability is that a very large number of people from India and China are converting from EB-3 to EB-2. Many of them had a Bachelor’s Degree, but did not have the requisite 5 years experience when they filed. They now do. Some individuals are also getting Master’s Degree. When you change or file another petition, you retain the old priority date. The current priority date for Eb-3 for India is September 15, 2002. These people have been waiting for 10 years before they get their Permanent Residency. Yet, all this time, they have been living and working in the US with their H-1B visas. The job clearly exist for them. Yet they have to wait and be punished simply because they were born in large countries which value education.

These people do have job, and will ultimately (hopefully in their lifetime) get the Permanent Residency. They are on valid visas and pay their taxes. They perform valuable service to the US, those technical jobs we do not graduate enough people. Yet farmers with political science and useless liberal arts degrees like Senator Grassley want to restrict these law abiding people from becoming United States’ resident. Senator, if the United States could perform solely with liberal arts degrees like you have, we would be the bottom nation of this world. We would become like your home state, Iowa, good for producing corn only.